The British Podcast Awards recognized the best shows created in Great Britain during the year. The winner for 2018 podcast of the year is Griefcast by Cariad Lloyd. Show in several categories received recognition, including family, true crime, comedy, sports, and branded content. Continue Reading
Amazon currently leads the industry for smart speakers, but more international competition has started to chip away at its dominant market share. Market research company Strategy Analytics released its first-quarter report on the product category. The analysis found that 9.2 million units were shipped globally in the period. Continue Reading
James Cridland’s Future of Radio is a column by the Australia-based radio futurologist. THIS WEEK: Further dives into buying spots on the Apple Podcast Chart. More on radio and podcasting from around the globe. Continue Reading
YouTube Music has expanded its program to spotlight up-and-coming performers. Artist on the Rise will now include a monthly program under the Trending tab, spotlighting a new musician every four weeks. The first highlighted artist is Jessie Reyez, whose career has grown from creative popular covers of pop tunes to receiving the Juno Award as Breakthrough Artist of the year. Continue Reading
Southwest Airlines has added iHeartRadio as the exclusive music offering for its suite of on-board entertainment. Passengers will be able to access live radio, custom artist stations, and curated playlists themed specifically for inflight listening such as “Pass the Time” and “Kids Zone.” Continue Reading
Tidal is no stranger to the rumor mill, but the past few weeks have been more eventful than usual for the streaming audio company. Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv has made multiple allegations about the platform, first that it intentionally inflated the stream counts for albums by Kanye West and Beyoncé, and more recently that it has fallen behind on payments to labels. Tidal has denied the newspaper’s claims. Continue Reading
Wireless Group, a media company wholly owned by News Corp UK and Ireland, announced the launch of an in-house digital audio production unit. The new Wireless Studios will deliver podcast production, marketing, and sponsorships for Wireless Group’s audio efforts. Continue Reading
RAJAR released its Q1 report today, not to be confused with its much larger MIDAS survey that came out earlier this week. The Q1 headline: Digital share of all radio listening was over 50% digitally delivered for the first time (50.9%, up from 47.2% in Q1 2017).
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PRX has announced that Shona Koester is its new chief operating officer. She joins the media and audio company from American Public Media, where she was most recently the vice president of distribution and content partnerships. Continue Reading
Kickstarter announced that Meredith Graves is joining the crowdfunding platform as its new director of music. Graves was most recently at MTV News, and she has experience as a writer, musician, and label founder. Continue Reading
In a significant rollout of new advertiser products, iHeartMedia is today launching iHeartMedia Analytics, a digital attribution service for broadcast radio. The company is seeking to transform how advertisers plan, buy, and measure their campaigns in the largest array of commercial stations in the U.S. Brian Kaminsky, iHeart’s President of Revenue Operations and Insights, offers details to RAIN News. Continue Reading
YouTube has announced its new streaming music service, and the platform will launch on May 22. YouTube Music will be a free new app and desktop player with the option for a YouTube Music Premium paid subscription. The move comes with changes across the video platform’s other entertainment properties, but it doesn’t seem to be entirely what was foreshadowed in the lead-up to today’s announcement. Continue Reading